Charitable Planning

Williams Coulson provides charitable and other nonprofit organizations with comprehensive advice on all issues they might face, including organizational, compliance, planning, governance, tax, and employment issues. We regularly create and provide counsel to private foundations and public charities. Williams Coulson assisted in the formation and currently represents and provides legal services to one of the largest private foundations in the nation with assets in excess of $350 Million. Through its experience and innovation, Williams Coulson enables charities and other nonprofits to operate successfully in the increasingly complicated environment facing nonprofits today.

Attorneys in our Trusts and Estates practice group have experience serving as both officers and directors of publicly supported charities and private family foundations. As a result of that involvement, we are familiar with the variety of complex legal, tax and administrative issues faced by charitably motivated individuals and organizations.

Included in the practice group’s mix of experience are matters of corporate and trust governance and income, excise and transfer tax issues. We are also knowledgeable about mission statement development, investment policy and grant procedures for all types of charitable organizations.

Our attorneys have advised several individual clients with respect to their substantial gifts to public charities, including gifts to facilitate the construction of new facilities, gifts to establish restricted perpetual endowment funds and the donation of a private art collection. We also routinely counsel individuals on charitable giving techniques that permit them to donate property to charity and receive a current income tax benefit while retaining the right to benefit from the property during their lifetimes.